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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 14 July 2023 [1].

Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication edit

Nominator(s): Vaticidalprophet 11:52, 5 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This is kind of a 'curiosity FAC', looking to see how it goes. It's gone through GAN and pre-FAC PR during my last period of heavy activity, which was...some time ago, but for such a niche topic it's unchanged since. I searched in-depth a couple days ago to see if anything new has been written on the subject lately; it hasn't. I got the consensus the last time around that it was about as developed as it can be, and I don't personally see further developments.

Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication is a 2014 essay collection on an unusual little topic -- the sociological and anthropological consequences of human-alien interactions. It's interesting reading, and freely available as a NASA publication. It's also a fascinating microcosm of its own subject (the perils of communication across long inferential distances); much of its claim to notability comes from news reports misinterpreting it as an 'ancient aliens'-type claim of prehistoric monuments being made by aliens. In an era where large language models have reignited the question of how to interact with non-human intelligences, it feels particularly resonant. Vaticidalprophet 11:52, 5 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

First-time nomination edit

  • Hi Vaticidalprophet, just a note that as a first time nominator at FAC, this article will need to pass a source to text integrity spot check and a review for over-close paraphrasing to be considered for promotion. Good luck with the nomination. Gog the Mild (talk) 11:58, 8 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

CommentsSupport from SN edit

  • Excellent, excellent. So niche it makes '1001 Facts Regarding the Inside of Ping Pong Balls' look positively best-selling coffee-table airport-lounge populism. At first glance—and this is just a thought—how set are you on keeping the sentences on each essay as discrete subsections? They are basically mini-paragraphs of a couple of sentences apiece, and I wondered whether you might run them together. As a lit. rev. might. But it might improve the flow; it's more of a list at the mo. Just a thought; maybe it's already been discussed. SN54129 12:36, 5 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm up for quite a few different ways to handle the essay section; it went in about three different directions over the course of the PR :) Is your proposal combining the paragraphs of each subheader (into one-long rather than multiple-short), and ditching the subheaders, or keeping the subheaders? "What to do with subheaders' is really the one part I was least sure about -- slightly too short to definitely have them, but slightly too long to definitely not. Vaticidalprophet 12:47, 5 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, I was thinking merging the sentences of each subsection into one longish para, as you say, but keeping the subheaders. Not so much out of appearance but I guess that's how the author divides up the book? In which case the three sections should probably be treated as stand-alone, even if the essays within them are all on a common topic. I'm a bit convoluted, but do you know what I mean? I took the liberty of tweaking '"Historical Perspectives on SETI' as an idea, here. Obvs, I'm perfectly happy to let you get other editors' opinions first, as mileage varies of course. SN54129 13:08, 5 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Yeah, that's how the book is divided. I get what you mean and like the demonstration -- will experiment (and see what suggestions roll in). Vaticidalprophet 13:28, 5 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Hmm. I've consolidated a little further, but not fully. Trying one-para sections looked a little too wall-of-text, but I note the concerns about the very sparse paragraphs (and didn't especially like how they read either), so I've got two-para sections now for each. This does introduce the problem of the paragraph breaks being slightly arbitrary, but none of the other solutions are ideal either. Will see other opinions. Vaticidalprophet 14:30, 5 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I think it's a great improvement personally; see what others think though. SN54129 15:01, 5 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • I presume these "unsourced" paragraphs are, in fact, sourced to the essays themselves? I am not sure that "in this section" is a good formulation in terms of Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Self-references to avoid Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 14:50, 5 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, they're unsourced under the same principle as PLOTCITE. I wasn't entirely sure about it in the PR (though was encouraged to take PLOTCITE as applicable), and I can cite it all to the essays if deemed necessary. WP:SELF seems to be about not referring to things as 'in this Wikipedia article', rather than cautioning against referring to something in a book's section -- am I misunderstanding it? Vaticidalprophet 15:00, 5 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    It seems a natural enough formulation to refer to a section of a book as 'this section'. And WP:SELFREF refers explicitly to Wikipedia referencing itself ('A self-reference in an article usually mentions Wikipedia directly or tells readers to take an action on Wikipedia, such as editing the article.'). SN54129 15:01, 5 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hi SN, will there be a full review forthcoming? Ta. Gog the Mild (talk) 13:03, 24 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
NoGog; I'm currently bombing (=crawling) down the M11 at the moment. In any case, I was happy to support after my suggestions above had been implemented (I note I did not say so. D'oh.). Thanks to a couple of detailed reviewers below, I'm comfortable iterating it now. SN54129 13:48, 24 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Image review edit

  • File:Traphagan033.jpg appears to have been copied from the ASU website - is there any evidence the uploader has the right to release it? Similarly File:Douglas_Vakoch.jpg. Nikkimaria (talk) 04:17, 7 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I was curious about this when setting that multi-image template up. The Traphagan image was, to put it delicately, uploaded by an account that was seemingly interested in the subject of John Traphagan to the exclusion of all else; it's not improbable to me that it could actually be chased up to someone with the right to that image, but obviously, I need to chase it up first. (Vakoch image, probably not.) My current plan is to see if potential rights holders are willing to release definitely-OTRS-cleared images, but in the meantime I'll look for images-not-of-authors. Vaticidalprophet 06:10, 7 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Nikkimaria, I've replaced them with frankly better/more relevant images about previous interstellar communication attempts -- do the licenses check out on these? I assumed they were all PD at base, but... I'm also curious about the best way to present such closely related images in the article. Multi-image seems technically ideal, but it forces fixed width, which I know is undesirable. A gallery seems overkill. Separate images entirely, maybe superfluous? But I think they're both (and maybe all three, I'm unsure yet on Arecibo) worth having, to highlight the diversity in the ways humans have tried to communicate with aliens (which ties into the book's point). Vaticidalprophet 06:30, 7 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd suggest swapping in File:The_Sounds_of_Earth_Record_Cover_-_GPN-2000-001978.jpg. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:42, 8 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Vaticidalprophet ? Gog the Mild (talk) 13:03, 24 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, missed this! Have switched it out, Nikkimaria. Vaticidalprophet 13:24, 24 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]


Support from Gog the Mild edit

Reusing to review.

  • "The book is focused on the role that the humanities and social sciences, in particular anthropology and archaeology, play in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The seventeen essays explore issues such as ..." It seems to me that this would be a more accurate description if "play in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence" were rephrased to something like 'play in extraterrestrial communication'.
  • "The significant positive response to the book",. Suggest removing "significant".
  • "inspired NASA to bring forward the e-book release". Do you mean 'inspired NASA to bring forward its release, as an e-book'?
  • "and misreported in headlines." Only in headlines?

More to follow. Gog the Mild (talk) 12:18, 7 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks so much for the review! Responses so far:
  • Have dropped 'significant' (and also 'freely' from 'freely available', which I notice now I never introduced at the PR despite agreeing with the rationale).
  • Search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a term-of-art that I wanted to introduce early, but it's true it's a bit of a broad one. Will see about phrasings; saying "extraterrestrial communication" does strike me as making the first sentence come across like a repetition of the title.
I understand the term, but it doesn't seem to be what "the book is focused on".
  • Have rephrased "the e-book release" as "its release in e-book form"; to my understanding it was always going to be in both e- and print, which isn't totally clear from "release, as an e-book" in either direction (imo), but on review not totally clear from the original phrasing either.
The way it is phrased, it is unclear if the dead tree version had already been released. My suggestion makes it clear (I think) that this was the first release, and that this first release was as an e-book.
  • "Only in headlines?" It's complicated -- some of them used it purely as clickbait and admitted it wasn't actually the case, some seemingly took it at face value throughout (discussed in the relevant section). Might be a way to make this clearer in the lead?
Delete "in headlines". Gog the Mild (talk) 21:45, 7 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Vaticidalprophet 16:56, 7 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Have done e-book and headline changes. I've revamped the first paragraph more generally -- its state was a holdover from a much sparser version of the article -- to follow the essay sections, of which the first is more explicitly about SETI. Vaticidalprophet 06:18, 8 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • "approach the subject from a humanities-focused lens". One cannot approach something from a lens.
  • "cross-chronological interactions". How does one have a cross-chronological interaction? Surely it can only be one way? (I assume that time travel was not posited.)
  • "addressing the concerns raised by significant inferential gaps". Is it possible for a gap to raise a concern?
  • "with MOBI, EPUB, and PDF versions officially released several days later". Is the actual date known?
  • "A paperback edition was published September 2014" → 'A paperback edition was published in September 2014'.
  • " Are the exact publication dates of the paper and hard back editions known?
    • Some sources imply the 1st or 6th for the paperback, but none RS. No indications for the hardback.
  • "such as processing the data encoded in signals received from potential extraterrestrial civilizations." I am not sure that "potential" makes sense here. I mean, if the signal is not from potential extraterrestrial civilization then there is no "data encoded" to process.
  • "The difficulties of studying ancient societies on Earth, editor Douglas Vakoch argues, are applicable to". I don't see how a difficulty can be applicable to anything. Do you mean 'problems' or 'approaches' or 'methodology' or similar?
  • After the section header "Essays" I think you need a note that you are about to cherry pick four essays for more detailed examination. (I assume that is what you have done.) Ok, it seems that the essays are divided into four sections. If that is the case, could you say so?
    • Paragraph clarifying the divisions added here (it still feels a little rough, will tweak further).
  • "Jeff Foust decried the phenomenon in his review". Could we have a brief introduction of who or what Foust is?
  • "while Jolene Creighton of From Quarks to Quasars". I puzzled over this for a while. Is it meant to communicate that Creighton is a staff writer for a periodical called From Quarks to Quasars?
    • Changed in the diff above.
  • "had a strong backing in the fields it investigated." What does "had a strong backing" mean?
    • ...oh yeah, that was an awkward wording. Changed in this diff.
  • "and its ability to combine it with accessible writing." Not grammatical.
    • Changed in the diff above, though I'll read back through that source for exactly what it says, because I'm not entirely happy with the new wording either.
  • "He referred to the conclusions made by essayists". Consider both "made" → 'reached' and "by essayists" → 'by the essayists'.
  • "would be a difficult ask". I am marginally unsure that this is encyclopedic language. Would 'would be difficult' work equally well?
    • If it's marginal, I do prefer the current wording.

More to follow. Gog the Mild (talk) 11:47, 8 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Have responded to all of these and made nearly every change. The publication date one is oddly tricky, and even harder to find now than in 2022 due to ISBNSearch changing up its site. (Its changes also made the month-year dates harder to verify, so have added archive links to the versions that verify them.) Vaticidalprophet 18:00, 8 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • "weakening its political position". Maybe 'weakening its political ability' or 'weakening its political position and so its ability'?
  • "commenting on the issues with interpreting". I am not sure that "with" works here. How about 'involved in' or similar?
  • "human language may be even greater for an alien language". Do we need "even"?
  • "Traphagan's second essay in the collection". Suggest deleting "in the collection", I think it is clear from context.
  • Link Drake equation.
  • "a means through which to estimate the number of extraterrestrial civilizations". I think "through" should be 'by'.
  • "figures such as Michael Crichton". Could Crichton be briefly introduced?

A fine article. I enjoyed reading it. Gog the Mild (talk) 20:09, 8 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! Done almost all between two diffs (I think 'even' is justified -- translating unknown scripts is incredibly hard). Vaticidalprophet 10:12, 9 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Apologies for the delay - RL! I am finding it almost impossible to track what changes you have made in response to which comments in the absence of in line responses, so I shall go through the whole thing again. Apologies if I then pick up any points which I didn't comment on first time around. Gog the Mild (talk) 16:42, 12 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Take 2 edit
  • "The seventeen essays are gathered into four sections, which respectively explore issues such as". Delete "such as", insert 'the' before "issues".
You can only write "such as" when what follows is a selection from the whole, ie a subset. In this case it isn't, you list all four sections, ie the entire set, so you can't use "such as".
  • "Despite originally being scheduled for publication" → 'Originally scheduled for publication' or similar.
  • "focusing on the role archaeologists and anthropologists play in extraterrestrial intelligence research" and two sentences later "exploring the roles archaeology and anthropology play in extraterrestrial research".
  • "A Tale of Two Analogues" by Ben Finney and Jerry Bentley draws on Finney's studies of Mayan culture; they draw comparisons between the protracted process of translating Mayan works and the difficulty of translating an alien work, and cast doubt on the views of some mathematicians and natural scientists that an extraterrestrial civilization would communicate with humanity solely through the "universal language" of mathematics and science. - A bit of a long sentence?
  • He notes that the issues faced in semiotic challenges such as decoding an unknown human language may be even greater for an alien language; for instance, he describes how all known human languages have used either alphabetic, syllabic, or ideographic writing systems, and anthropologists are able to estimate which an unknown language uses by its number of characters, which may not be a shared assumption for an extraterrestrial writing system. - and again.
  • "considering a difficult task but one worthy of study". Should this be 'considering this a difficult task but one worthy of study' or similar?
  • "Learning to Read" focuses on the hypothetical alien translation of interstellar messages transmitted by humanity. Its author Kathryn E. Denning deems the task of writing alien-translatable messages "neither trivial nor impossible", considering a difficult task but one worthy of study; she discusses the need for interdisciplinary study to produce such messages, with important work from fields such as cryptography and anthropology. - another very long sentence.
  • The Gizmodo review began with an out-of-context quote from William Edmondson's essay on how mysterious stone carvings "might have been made by aliens" as a metaphor for the difficulties in researching long-lost ancient societies; though the review went on to note that this should not be interpreted as a literal statement, the quote was picked up by publications such as Artnet, TheBlaze, and The Huffington Post as a clickbait headline. - Another overly long sentence.
  • "compared the issues it raised to those explored by science fiction works such as The Sparrow." What is The Sparrow? And what issues does it raise/explore?
  • "Vakoch explained the book's purpose further". Further than what and/or when?
  • "he noted that although bridging the communication gap with an extraterrestrial civilization would be a difficult ask, the rapid discovery of exoplanets in the past decades increased the likelihood extraterrestrial intelligence would be identified.". 1. I think this should be a separate sentence. 2. I don't see the connection between the two clauses, much less a balance that justifies the "although". Perhaps split these two clause into separate sentences?
Nice.

Gog the Mild (talk) 21:35, 12 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Made most changes here. The first one is accurate -- that one is cherrypicked, in that I needed an intro but didn't want to summarize the details of all 17 essays in a paragraph. (Might be a better way to put it still...) Vaticidalprophet 17:41, 14 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Trying to track what if anything you have done to address each comment when you have not made in line responses was something of a trial. I think I have tracked down what you have done when you have done something and identified when you haven't; but if I have got something wrong, let me know. That said, only the "such as" point above and the Garber commas below left from my POV.
  • "by Stephen J. Garber" has commas either side. In every other similar case there are no commas. Is there a reason fo the Garber inconsistency?
    Have removed 'such as' in this diff. Vaticidalprophet 00:21, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Gog the Mild (talk) 17:21, 17 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry about the diff situation! For a little while it was hard on my end to keep track of the changes well enough. Things are still...difficult in my life right now, but I'll hopefully have the opportunity to look back over this soon and reply point-by-singular-point. I don't think there's a reason for the Garber inconsistency, but I'll read back over it before making a clear statement. Vaticidalprophet 21:04, 18 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I will be away for a few days. I look forward to supporting once I am back. Gog the Mild (talk) 21:36, 18 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you so much! Have posted the diffs of each change above. Vaticidalprophet 00:21, 20 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

CommentsSupport from Sdkb edit

I have previously commented on this article during its peer review. It was in good shape then, so I anticipate that an FA pass on this first attempt will be very feasible. Accordingly, a lot of my comments below are targeted at subtle optimizations, not dealbreaker elements that need to be resolved in order for me to support. If you disagree with any, just let me know your reasoning so I can see that it's a conscious choice.

  • Humanities and social sciences seem like possible overlinks for the lead, given that they're fairly recognizable and followed closely by more justifiable (because more relevant and less recognizable) links to anthropology and archeology. I don't feel super strongly, but I'd lean toward removing them.
  • The article lacks {{Use dmy dates}}. Before we add that, though — could you speak to the choice to use dmy over mdy, given the ties to the U.S.?
    • In retrospect, cultural ties tend to be interpreted leniently, so I'm not sure I had to change it to AmEng in the first place...Having said that, I think it's defensible to use either in a NASA article, because NASA themselves use YMD. I don't have strong opinions on this either way and could change it to MDY (admittedly with probably about as many retained mistakes to fix as when I changed it to AmEng), but it does feel intuitively reasonable to me to deem NASA-related articles a little weird. Vaticidalprophet 06:12, 24 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      Sure, sounds good. But the article still needs the template for WP:ENDURE reasons. I think you can use {{use dmy dates|cs1-dates=y}} or something like that to preserve YMD in the citations. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 20:33, 25 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      Added said template here. Vaticidalprophet 03:15, 26 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Originally scheduled for publication in June 2014, a PDF of Archaeology, Anthropology, and Interstellar Communication Given how unwieldy the title is, and that there's not any risk of confusion with something else, I'd just say the collection here.
  • I'd add "metaphorically" after stating, just so that readers know what to expect going into the quote, which makes it slightly easier to comprehend.
    • I've offset this as 'rhetorically', which I think is a little more accurate than 'metaphorically' but does get across that the quote isn't-a-literal-description-of-reality. Vaticidalprophet 05:41, 25 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Following up from the PR, was WP:Media copyright questions ever able to offer any insight about whether the book cover is PD or not? Keep in mind that if it's PD, we can use it as the visual when this runs as TFA, whereas if not we'll have to find something else.
    • So, I'm still sorting that out. The original post a year ago was archived without replies. I wanted to head to MCQ again recently, after finding yet another variant cover...and promptly had my whitelist application for the site that hosted the version-with-variant-cover declined. I am not in a rush to TFA, though I'll admit I'm more than a little miffed about getting a whitelist denial for explicitly "this is never going to be used in an article, its status as a reliable or unreliable source is irrelevant, I just need it to sort out an NFCC question". Vaticidalprophet 06:12, 24 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      • Update: have asked at MCQ, and hopefully won't be archived this time. I need to reupload the cover either way (they finally fixed the typo, I have to assume after seeing it on Wikipedia), so it'll be useful to know for sure before then. Vaticidalprophet 05:41, 25 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
        • Update 2: MCQ comments make me lean closer that it's PD, but without certainty still, so I've contacted NASA to clarify. Their response times are very slow, so, well...it'll at least be sorted by TFA, hopefully. Vaticidalprophet 03:15, 26 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Any follow-up to my comment about adding the division within NASA that published the book?
    • Never found that, unfortunately. Vaticidalprophet 06:12, 24 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      The info is on the first page, and identifies the publication as part of "The NASA History Series". Can't we just cite that via WP:ABOUTSELF? {{u|Sdkb}} talk 20:41, 25 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      I've added a mention of the imprint here. Vaticidalprophet 06:59, 26 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • The link to NASA in the body could be earlier, in the mention in the "Essays" section.
    • Yeah, this is an edit scar from adding that paragraph. Fixed. Vaticidalprophet 05:41, 25 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think you should have some sort of ENGVAR tag as a matter of WP:ENDURE. analyses is British English, which doesn't seem like the best fit given the U.S. ties.
  • Its author Kathryn E. Denning deems I'd offset the name with commas. Later in that sentence, I think the semicolon could be made a full stop.
    • I just removed the other comma offset because there weren't any else, so I'm just going to let these sit for now :P Vaticidalprophet 05:41, 25 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • First contact (anthropology) would be a good link over colonial interactions. In the next sentence, some of the links to different cultures border on overlinking. I think we likely may have more specific coverage of colonial interactions with these cultures (either through sections or specific articles); linking to that would both sidestep the overlinking issue and be more helpful for readers seeking further info.
    • I've added the first contact link. I'm inclined to keep the cultural links, because it's a broad, continent-crossing range of cultures and it's unlikely any one non-specialist reader will be familiar with all their pre-contact backgrounds. (Basically no one outside North America knows Iroquois history, and I suspect very few people outside Oceania do Maori history.) In particular, many readers won't necessarily be aware that they were all technologically and socially complex before European contact, and could reasonably want to read further on the details of an individual one. Vaticidalprophet 05:41, 25 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      I'm not looking for links to be removed so much as MOS:SPECIFICLINK to be applied where possible. For instance, I think Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire would be a better link for the concept of European contact with the Aztec Empire than just Aztec. It does slightly raise the MOS:SPECIFICLINK vs MOS:EGG conundrum, but I think the former ought to take precedence. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 20:52, 25 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      I've specific-linked the Aztec one. The others are a little more complicated -- there's no obvious single-contact-event to point at for Chinese and Japanese interactions with Europeans, and the articles for the Maori and Iroquois cover first contact reasonably well/aren't so long that the reader would be drowned in other info. (A little more to the point, they're also the ones where the reader is less likely to know, without an existing article, that the cultures were pretty advanced beforehand.) I think the current situation works. Vaticidalprophet 15:03, 26 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      I still think we can do better. For Japan, History of Japan would be better than Japanese people, and perhaps even something like Nanban trade#First contacts if the discussion in the essay is mainly about first contact with Portuguese. For China, perhaps either Concessions in China or Western imperialism in Asia#Western European and Russian intrusions into China. For Iroquois, probably just Iroquois#History. For Maori, perhaps Māori history#Early European contact (1642–1840).
      I'll go ahead and make these changes so that I can wrap up my review, but feel free to tweak if you find better links. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 14:41, 29 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Is there anything to link over intentional behaviour? (Also British English again here)
    • De-u'd both 'behavio[u]rs' in this section, though I'm not sure there's a link to make. Vaticidalprophet 05:41, 25 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Gizmodo should be linked on first mention.
  • As nice as the block quote from Foust is as a visual element for the reception section, I'm concerned that it may be a copyright violation, given that we're using quite a big chunk and that our use is not particularly transformative, limiting the application of fair use. I'd check with those more knowledgeable about copyright issues to resolve this.
    • So, this is tricky! I think it's defensible by UCLA's fair use guidelines (which are actually surprisingly lenient here, but that's the line between legal-fair-use and NFCC-fair-use for you). Having said that, probably not ideal to quite both in the blockquote and in the section text. I'll tweak the section text, because I really do want to use the blockquote if it's defensible. Vaticidalprophet 06:12, 24 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      Well, since this is Wikipedia, we have to abide by the Wikipedia guidelines, even if they are unfortunately strict. I left a note a few days ago inquiring about this, which I think is sufficient due diligence for the FAC; it's on the copyright folks now to speak out if they see an issue. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 14:45, 29 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • CNET and TheBlaze (and maybe others) are italicized in the reception section, even though they're not at their own articles. I think that the articles are wrong, not the section here, but it might be worth checking at WT:Italics to get help from more knowledgeable folks.
    • Given that talk has two posts and they're both from 2006, I'm not sure how quickly I'd get a response. It does seem to me the articles are probably the ones in the wrong, especially given that TheBlaze italicizes it for the earlier print magazine version. I considered bold-changing both articles, but concluded it'd be a bit more technically fiddly than I want to subject myself to right now without script assistance. Vaticidalprophet 03:15, 26 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • From Quarks to Quasars is the first of the redlinks that's given me pause. What's your argument that the site is notable and thus warrants a redlink?
    • It probably doesn't, really, especially given Creighton is linked, so I've removed this. Vaticidalprophet 03:15, 26 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Given that it's been used throughout the article, I think readers can be expected to remember what "SETI" means, so I'd remove the link in the reception section per WP:DUPLINK.
    • I think we've had this conversation before, but the MOS has finally changed here, so -- I'm very liberal with linking per section, because statistically, most readers read "the lead and a section" (assuming they read past the lead, anyway), and most readers are on mobile, where they can't see sections they haven't specifically opened. I think linking-per-section here is ideal for reader understanding, and supported by the recent changes to the MOS. Vaticidalprophet 06:12, 24 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
      I supported a predecessor change to that one, and given it, I'm alright leaving this to your discretion. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 21:10, 25 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Doing a quick reference formatting review, I see a few issues. Publication names with "the" in them should be fixed (as I did in the body), and "NASA" should not be appearing by itself in italics as in ref #11; change |work=/|website= to |publisher=.
  • This is up to you, but I encourage the linking of publication names in references for FAs, since assessing source reliability is a key task for readers with good information literacy, and being able to easily click through to see what we've written about its reputation aids significantly with that.
  • If you feel like being particularly OCDdetail-oriented, the categories might be nicer in alphabetical or some sort of semiotic order.
  • For source verification, the Foust review doesn't seem to explicitly call the headlines clickbait, whereas we do.
    • Hm. I think this is a permissible way to phrase what he clearly implicitly calls them, but can see counterarguments. Do you have another recommendation of how to put it? Vaticidalprophet 15:03, 26 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Again, these are very manageable issues, and I look forward to supporting once they're addressed. Overall, this is a very solid, well-crafted article that gives its narrow topic a suitable encyclopedic treatment. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} talk 00:13, 24 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks so much for the review, Sdkb! I've made a few quick replies and will get to the rest soon (just sifting through the comments for now). Vaticidalprophet 06:12, 24 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sdkb, I think these should be generally dealt with now? I really only have a query about the last, and of course NASA is going to take a while to get back to me about the book cover, though I'm strongly leaning now towards it being PD (awaiting confirmation). But if we can work out a good way to handle the last point, these should be handled. Vaticidalprophet 06:44, 27 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Having done a peer review and further review here, I am satisfied that this article has been fully optimized to FA standards. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 14:54, 29 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Source review edit

  • The search for sources seems to have been quite exhaustive but I expect nothing less from the author.
  • I'm not sure I would cite ISBN Search, and besides, it's not clear if the hardcover/paperback type information is relevant to include, especially if it's not covered in a secondary source.
  • Personally I would be inclined to use inline citations with page numbers when summarizing the content of non-fiction works, but I am not sure if this is required by the FA criteria so I won't insist on it.
  • Otherwise the use of sources seems acceptable as far as I can tell without doing source checks. (t · c) buidhe 20:10, 27 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks for the review, Buidhe! I leaned here towards including print release dates, even primary-sourced, to avoid the risk of ambiguity about whether the book received a physical release otherwise. I think this is of encyclopedic interest -- the implications of 'publishing a book in print and ebook' are fairly different to that of 'posting a free PDF online', and without that context I think the subject could be misconstrued as the latter, which opens up reader queries of "why is this a thing that is of any significance/something I should care about?". I recognize opinions on these things vary, though, and I'm not sure if we have any similar cases (of books where the digital version is free) at FA level either way to point to. Vaticidalprophet 10:20, 28 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Buidhe, just checking given that they're required for this one -- are you planning on doing spotchecks or should I wait for another reviewer to do so? Vaticidalprophet 16:11, 2 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Spot checks etc - pass edit

  • I can identify no plagiarism nor over-close paraphrasing.
  • Cite 17b - I can find no reference to Artnet in the source. Should this read 'Sploid'?
    • Cited Artnet's coverage of the book to itself in this diff -- it must've gotten mixed up somewhere which source used it specifically. Vaticidalprophet 21:28, 5 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Cite 18 - check.
  • Cite 23 - check.
  • Cite 2d - check.
  • Cite 3 - chck. (Just.)
  • Cite 10 a & b - check.
  • Cite 16 - "The collection was published by NASA's History Program Office, part of the Public Outreach Division of its Office of Communications, under the NASA History Series imprint." I am struggling to find this in the source given. Could you point me towards it?
    • This was added by Sdkb and the specific source for it wasn't given, so I double-checked that it was sourced from the book's title page (it is) and added that source in this diff.

Just my queries on cites 16 and 17b to come back to me on. Gog the Mild (talk) 16:02, 5 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • Should both be addressed -- I'll be back to tweak the cite formatting soon. Just to clarify, does 'standardize to one of sentence-or-title case' include the book title and chapters, or only the news articles? Vaticidalprophet 21:28, 5 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Book titles should always be in title case. Chapter, journal articles, and periodical and newspaper articles should consistently be in one; IMO title case, but it is possible to read the MoS as implying that either is acceptable. I'm going to be away for a couple of days, but hope to check in on Saturday. Gog the Mild (talk) 21:49, 5 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Formatting should be addressed now. Vaticidalprophet 10:59, 7 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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